


Sparrows

by loosingletters



Series: Lost Tales of Gotham [3]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Son of Batman (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Assassin Jason Todd, BAMF Desmond Miles, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Desmond Miles Lives, Dick Grayson is Robin, First Civilization Technology ex Machina, Gen, In Gotham the Brotherhood Does Not Kill, Marked as complete only for my sanity, Mentor Desmond Miles, One Shot Collection, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2019-11-17 13:25:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18099374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loosingletters/pseuds/loosingletters
Summary: In Gotham, interesting people were usually dressed in either black or some bright eye-catching color.And then there was this guy wearing white, running over the rooftops.Also known as Desmond Miles takes one look at Gotham's architecture and immediately decides that it's his kind of city. Various Batman/Assassin's Creed Crossovers.





	1. Passing through

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Desmond's birthday!

When Dick Grayson had left the mansion for a patrol, he’d expected a regular night out. Beat up a few criminals, stop maybe one small town gang, nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing had screamed major world-destroying evil plans lately, and Nightwing had really looked forward to it. He missed the times when Batman and his most terrible opponents had been regular mob bosses. He'd take that over Ra's al Ghul, the Joker or any other melodramatic villain every day. Never mind that the past weeks had been hectic with Talia dropping by and temporarily ruining much of the progress they had made with Damian. The kid would never end up somewhere on the scale that could be classified as normal, no teenage hero ever did, but Damian had been smiling, cracking jokes and hanging out with his friends before Talia had interfered. Needless to say, Nightwing was angry and did not need some major villain on top of their problems with Damian.

Nightwing used to think Jason was the most troublesome Robin when set off and, well, he was still the headache-inducing one, just on a level that wasn’t precisely a thirteen-year-old with super assassin training and a list of intimacy issues longer than Batman's.

Trying to big brother Damian was exhausting, especially since all of his other siblings miraculously had something better to do and had decided to team up with their various friends on some incredibly important missions. Way to ditch the family responsibilities.

Then again, it wasn’t like Nightwing was doing any different tonight by taking over patrol for Batman. He‘d needed a break, work out and some fresh air, and Bruce needed to attend to his fatherly duties. Switching patrols in Gotham promised all of that and a little more.

Silently he scaled up a building to get a better view of his surroundings. The night was young still and he had to figure out where he wanted to start. Main Street was pretty calm, and after the robberies last week, police presence had been increased there. Sure that this particular part of the city was a little safer for now, Nightwing turned to the maze of small and dark alleys. He took a run up and moved to the next rooftop, landing on the other side with ease. Oh, yes, he had missed the exercise. He continued on, moving forwards steadily through every district, taking his sweet time to be extra throughout.

“Hey!” A shout disturbed the relative peace.

Nightwing turned right to see a couple guys teaming up on someone.

The man was dressed in white, a stark difference to the shadows of the streets, and put up quite a fight, screaming loud enough to wake up the whole neighborhood.

“Give it back!”

Nightwing approached the group, ready to drop down from the building and take down the aggressors when the civilian apparently decided that enough was enough. The man punched the first thug square in the face and in one swift movement used his right foot to make the man stumble and fall to the ground, knocked out cold. The man didn’t stop there but used his momentum to kick guy number two in the kneecaps before reaching to grab his jacket’s collar and pull the man close for a headbutt. The rest of the fight proceeded similarly. The man absolutely dominated the battle, if the beat down could be called that, wasting no energy on extravagant moves, but working fast and efficiently, not taking a single hit but dealing out plenty. He turned his rather small frame to his advantage, ducking out of his attackers’ holds and moving in between the mob with a distinctly familiar grace. It reminded Nightwing a bit of Damian’s fighting style if he was honest.

The brat was a heavy hitter for his age, sure, but what actually made him dangerous was his efficiency and sleek fighting style. Sure, none of the batkids had been overwhelmingly physically strong fighters when they had started out, which probably originated from the fact that children simply didn’t have any real strength compared to adults. They had needed and wanted to learn how to take down a man twice their size anyway, but Damian with his assassin training had made it an art form.

So who was this stranger in white who could take down a group of people without breaking a sweat in such a familiar manner?

One of the thugs who had stood a bit off to the side was now running away, holding a bag close to his chest.

“Don’t run away now, coward! Give me my bag!” The man in white shouted as he beat down the last criminal and ran after him.

Nightwing spared one last glance at the pile of bodies on the ground. All of them were still alive, though not much more force would have been needed to make sure they wouldn't wake up from that particular beating. It required careful precision to stop right before someone could die.

This night was getting more and more interesting.

Nightwing abandoned his hiding spot and followed the two runaway fighters. The thief with the bag had climbed up the fire escape two buildings further, hastily reaching for each step of the ladder. His pursuer wasn’t far behind, catching up to him at an alarming speed. He used the bars of the fire escape ladder to catapult him higher, looking much like a child at the park using the monkey bars and similar climbing equipment. So parkour was natural to him, Nightwing concluded and jumped from the house he was onto the one the other two were scaling up.

The thief reached the top first - and honestly, what did he expect would happen now? He would have had a much better chance on the ground - and in his haste, he didn’t notice Nightwing at all as he kept looking back.

Nightwing simply stepped into the man’s line, holding out his left foot and making the man stumble and crash to the ground.

“You really shouldn’t take what doesn’t belong to you,” Nightwing said and picked up the backpack. It was surprisingly heavy. Before he could peek inside though, its owner had reached the top of the house.

He took one look at the man on the ground and snorted. “Could’ve used your help before.”

Nightwing grinned. So he had been spotted? He hadn’t seen the man look in his direction even once.

“You had it handled.”

“And here I was thinking Gotham’s protectors helped every citizen.”

“You’re not a regular citizen. I certainly haven’t seen you before.”

The man seemed to be around his own age, maybe a year or two younger than Nightwing. The hood of his jacket had done a good job of concealing his features in the dark and only with it down Nightwing could get a proper look at him. An old scar ran through the corner of his lips, but otherwise, he didn't look remarkable. Right now he seemed harmless enough and stared at Nightwing with a blank expression, only his bright golden eyes retaining the glint of the predator he’d seen tonight.

“You do know how creepy that sounds, right? You can’t possibly know everyone who lives in this city.”

“Everyone who’s interesting enough, Mr…?”

“Just passing through.”

“Nobody just passes through Gotham, not with your skills.”

“Well, I am,” the man hissed. Then, softer, “I really don’t want to stay here. If you could just give me my bag and forget this happened?”

“Sure,” Nightwing agreed. “Let me just…”

He opened the backpack and looked inside. No wonder it had been so heavy, it was completely full. A laptop and a burner phone, clothes, pills, food- this was the bag of someone on the run.

“You sure you’re going to be okay?”

“Always have been, always will be. Now, my bag, please.”

The man held out his hand with an expectant look. Seemed like play time was over. Nightwing closed the backpack again and threw it over to the puzzling stranger. He caught the bag easily, though he did end up looking quite pissed.

“You could have broken my stuff! That’s a crime you know.”

Keyword being could have. Nobody who’d shown off that much talent as he had before would fail at catching their most prized and probably also only possession.

“So is beating up people,” Nightwing countered.

The man stopped checking through his backpack to give Nightwing a look. When was the last time someone not in the hero/villain business had dared to be so outgoing in his presence? The crime-fighting life really didn’t do Nightwing’s social life much of a favor.

“That’s self-defense, unlike your costumed vigilante gig.”

He put his backpack on and pulled up the hood of his sweater. Gold flashed on the right side of his neck - jewelry maybe?

The man didn’t take his eyes off Nightwing when he slowly walked backward to the edge of the building. “Have a good night.”

Then he took another step, off the building this time, already falling. What the hell was this guy thinking!?

“Wait!” Nightwing rushed forward and jumped after the guy, only to see he had already disappeared. There was no red on the ground, no blood tainted white, nothing at all. Just the dark alley, and the trash that was always lying around.

_Interesting._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you liked this!  
> Not sure yet whether I'll continue this, I currently have another major Batman fanfic in the works (because writing 10.000 words chapters for a story that was supposed to be 15.000 in total is something I definitely needed to do) and I don't really have much plot for this besides Desmond joining the vigilante business like "my family has been doing this for centuries hold my Shirley Templar".  
> I'd love to hear what you think!


	2. When in Gotham, do as the Batman does

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gotham's Mentor has an interesting talk with Batman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for AssCreed Week Day 2: Assassin Brotherhood.  
> This particular One shot is dedicated to CloudE who left me the most wonderful world-building comment on the last One shot!

Desmond loved Gotham. It was like Florence or Venice or Rome, except better because it was  _his_  city. You could tell that it had been built on the bodies of Templars and Assassins alike, particularly the Assassin influence was hard to miss if you had their training. Every corner was easy to disappear into, the buildings were high and the houses crammed into each other to create one fast-paced track for rooftop chasers. Not to mention the abandoned underground railroad tracks or the catacombs sleeping even deeper below. Gotham was built for its shadowy protectors and took good care to hide them all away.

Shaun and Becca had declared him officially mad for settling in this city. He could have gone everywhere in the world. Assassins as skilled as Desmond were hard to come by and currently needed all around the globe.

But Desmond had died for their cause once already  _(and then been fished out of terror-filled green pits of screaming nails on blackboards)_  and so they had allowed him to pick.

And Desmond had chosen Gotham.

Or maybe the city had chosen him.

People didn’t really move to Gotham, Desmond had noticed. Nor did they ever leave despite having the funds or the motivation. They cursed and screeched and begged, but they never went further than a vacation away.

And some people didn’t leave at all.

It was a moderately warm September night still. They had been blessed with a warm summer, and its remnants were still chasing through the winds, rolling in-between the skyscrapers. Gotham’s chaos had been calm lately. It was only a question of time until the first Rogue broke out of Arkham again, but right now everything was still. It was one of those nights in which they actually had time to look out for the candles and the flashlights asking for their help. Desmond had sent most of his recruits out for training, errands and information gathering. Maybe also a little blackmail depending on how they brave they got tonight. Instead of supervising from their headquarters, Desmond had chosen to take their youngest recruit out. Though Jason, by all means, wasn’t really a recruit as much as he was a kid that had realized the city’s Thief guild might support him on the streets, but the Brotherhood could get him away from them.

Or as away from them as Jason wanted to be.

He’d seen Desmond teach the Novices how to do a Leap of Faith and that was it. He hadn’t stopped pestering Desmond about teaching him, even at the bar where minors definitely weren’t allowed in, until Desmond had agreed. Jason wouldn’t stop arguing that Robin couldn’t have been much older than Jason either when he had started tailing the Bat. However, Jason also didn’t know that Robin had been trained to be an acrobat (and unknowingly an assassin) from birth.

Desmond knew because he had made it his business to know what was going on in his city.

The identities of its brightest protectors were simply a part of that. Batman had been here before Desmond, had bled for this city. Sure, Desmond could argue he had died for the whole world, but at sixteen he had run away from it all, unlike Bruce Wayne, who had already known his destiny then.

This was also the reason why Desmond’s Brotherhood didn’t kill. He respected Batman’s code as the superior rule. Even law enforcement worked with him while they certainly didn’t know about the Brotherhood.

(Well, they did to an extent. You couldn’t miss the spray-painted  _As_  that had shown up all over the city, but the police thought those belonged to a random tagger or, at worst, a gang.)

It was another matter that had his out of town Assassin contacts roll their eyes and bite their cheeks at. Desmond had no problems with assassinations. He was freakishly alright with them so much that he wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out the Isu had engineered him that way.

However, their Brotherhood’s no-kill rule was the only reason the Bat tolerated their presence. Maybe the fact that they had quietly gotten rid of the Court of Owls had contributed as well. It wasn’t murder if you cryogenically froze them to be picked up by the Justice League later on.

The Gotham Brotherhood didn’t kill. It made them child-friendly enough that Desmond had given in to Jason’s demands and let the eleven-year-old become his protégé.

And so here they were, standing on a rooftop and waiting for the Bat to drop in.

“How much longer do we gotta wait?” Jason asked.

After tonight, Desmond would work on the boy’s situational awareness. He remembered a few games Ezio used to play with his recruits and their children to teach them how to observe. They also had the neat side-effect of detecting whether someone was predisposed for eagle vision. Desmond thought he had seen Jason’s eyes flash gold once or twice, the speed at which he managed to track down people certainly spoke for it, but he couldn’t be sure.

He knew Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson both had the gift though, and that Wayne was aware of it. You didn’t train with an old splinter group of the Brotherhood for years to be ignorant of eagle vision.

“Mask on, kiddo?” Desmond asked instead, studying the shadows to their right that had become just a little too dense.

He had felt ridiculous the first time he had put on a mask, he didn’t need one to obscure his face, but masks made people think of vigilantes, and it was better to be mistaken for those (and honestly in these times the border between Assassin and Vigilante had become thin) than be known as the Brotherhood. Gotham was mostly Templar free and Desmond would like to keep to this way. He didn’t need their attention, not when his people weren’t strong enough yet. Nowadays, Desmond was used to the weight of the mask covering his eyes. He had grown fond of the red and gold Venetian Rebecca had bought him as a joke.

“Never took it off.”

Desmond smiled. “Good.”

Then he turned back to the shadows. “Hello, Batman. Robin.”

Behind him he could feel Jason tense, looking around to spot the vigilantes Desmond had already identified.

“Mentor,” Batman greeted him and finally stepped forward, Robin following him easily, being just a step behind.

“Oooh, who is that?” The Boy Wonder asked, mustering Jason.

“My protégé. Don’t take him too far, please, he’s untrained still.”

“What do you mean ‘don’t _take him too far’_?” Jason asked, but Robin had already crossed the distance eagerly.

Desmond wasn’t sure whether Batman took Robin along to these meetings precisely to have him distract the companion Desmond had chosen to take with him or if Robin really was just that sociable. The Bat’s intentions were hard enough to read on the really good days and Desmond had better things to do than waste hours on that particular headache.

Within seconds Robin was talking with Jason, contributing most of the conversation, while Jason nodded at the right moments, his eyes never entirely leaving Desmond.

“He’s young.”

Batman too was observing the boys’ interaction. He had his arms crossed over his chest, suggesting a relaxed posture, but his shoulders were tensed.

“I have questions about Abstergo, Desmond Miles. And about those you call  _Isu_.”

Desmond sighed. He had wondered how long it would take Batman to actually figure out his identity. They had pretty much erased Desmond Miles, or any other alias he had used before Abstergo had captured him, from history. By all means, Desmond was a ghost. But apparently, even death couldn’t keep the world’s greatest detective away.

“Alright, Mr. Wayne,” Desmond replied. “But does that mean I can take a look at the Piece of Eden you keep at your manor in turn? I don’t want to criticize, but these things really shouldn’t be handled by someone without experience.”

Batman fell silent. On the rooftop next to them, Jason was shouting in joy while Robin performed his quadruple flip for him. He should watch that jump. It was common knowledge, at least for those interested in acrobatics, that not many people could perform it – Gotham’s resident prince Dick Grayson being by far the youngest person. It was even on his  _Wikipedia_  page.

“And you have that experience?”

Desmond tugged at his hoodie’s right sleeve, revealing his black glove first, and then his burned arm beneath. The golden circuitry was shining brightly in the dark. Once he stopped using eagle vision, it would return to a muted yellow you could mistake for tattoo ink.

“You’re standing in front of the world’s expert on these cursed artifacts.”

His smile was weary, but there was no point in lying. Ever since his death, Desmond had been able to feel these remains of Eden if he got close enough to them. They didn’t make him uncomfortable, but he could almost tell what each piece had been crafted for, and the thought of letting them lie around left to their own devices was fear-inspiring.

“We have much to discuss. I’ll contact you.  _Robin_.”

Across, Robin perked up and moved from his handstand into a bridge and then into a stand. Batman waited just long enough for Robin to plunge into a print and jump over the gaps between the rooftops before he too leaped away into the alley on their right.

Jason wasn’t far behind Robin, crossing the space between houses without hesitating. Whatever Robin had demonstrated or told him, its effects were already showing.

“You done already?” Jason asked.

“Mhm. Why are you asking?”

Jason clicked his tongue and shot Desmond an annoyed look. “Nothin’s true. I should ask questions.”

“I taught you that sentence,” Desmond replied and began to walk into the direction of tonight’s second destination. He’d drop Jason back home on the way. Sure, the kid had seen much already, experienced too much for his age, but Desmond wasn’t going to take a ten-year-old to the Foxglove. Not even for information gathering. “And I’m sure it definitely had nothing to do with Robin.”

“Oh, c’ mon, D. It’s  _Robin_. He’s the coolest. So you gotta tell me what you talked about ’cause he was gonna teach me how to do the neat flip.”

“I’m sure you’ll get another chance to learn from him. Batman just asked for some credentials.”

“Credentials? That can’t be everythin’. Come oooon, tell me. Tell me, tell me, please. You know I can do this all night  _and_  day.”

Desmond didn’t doubt him, he knew better. Jason’s presence at his side was proof of that.

“I know. You showed me that you had endurance and now you’ll learn patience.”

“What? You can’t be serious! Des- hey!”

Desmond chose that moment to jump from the balcony into the dumpster beneath. The smell of these containers really made him miss the haystacks of his ancestors.

“Patience, Novice,” Desmond repeated.

Batman would tell him soon enough when he wanted to meet up. You couldn’t shake off Batman once you had his attention.

(And true enough, he got an invitation to Wayne manor a week later. He didn’t dwell on the fact that Batman knew where he lived. It was only fair.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay sooooo.  
> I've decided to just collect all my ideas for AssCreed/Batman crossovers here. This particular one has post prevented apocalypse Desmond deciding Gotham is where he's gonna settle so he does. Jason grows up as an Assassin (except they don't really kill people here). In my files, this was called "local world-weary dumbasses are attracted to competence" (pls ignore this and let me ship Desmond and Bruce in peace).  
> This is the [mask](https://www.italymask.co.nz/shop/Wearable/For+Him/Venetian+Masquerade+Mask+Colombina+Vivian+Music+Red%3Fsku=04550.html) I see Desmond wearing!  
> Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear what you think!


End file.
